


Smoke and Mirrors

by SippingPlotting



Series: movies [1]
Category: Downton Abbey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 16:01:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12915303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SippingPlotting/pseuds/SippingPlotting
Summary: Sarah O'Brien is encouraged to turn over a 'new leaf' by some helpful visitors.A DA take on a very familiar old holiday movie,a Christmas Carol, but in the DA timeline this is February...so I had to go with a different title than that.





	1. Stave I

-  
-  
-  
Old Mr. Watson was dead, of that O'Brien had it on the best authority.  
He'd left before the war, driven out by her desire to put her own creature in as valet.  
Had taken some cufflinks, told Carson what he could do with himself, and went whistling down the road.  
Of course, they didn't find out about the theft until later, the butler being too apoplectic to watch much of anything about the man's departure. 

And when the note came saying Watson had been found dead, having starved from no work and no reference--few expressed surprise.  
No one much cared or even tried to find out details of the funeral arrangements.  
Especially Sarah O'Brien, who'd caused the man's decline. 

 

But Old Mr. Watson was dead.  
Of that, the reader must know O'Brien felt certain before we go on with it.  
After all, what follows wouldn't much matter if he were still alive, or if the old woman still believed him to be alive.  
For even though everyone knew her to be a grasping, hideous, mean old woman, if he'd still been alive, what she saw wouldn't have hit her in the same way, you know. Would have been easier to explain away.

\--

"Good night, Miss O'Brien," Anna Bates said merrily as she and her husband got ready to depart for the night.  
"Says you," the older woman said, glaring at the two maliciously.  
She'd not forgiven them for helping Barrow against her. Indeed, the year in which Jimmy Kent had tortured the man might have helped some, but then the fight had happened and now Jimmy had his change of heart.  
O'Brien stood without any revenge to sweeten her mood. Stood completely and bitterly alone. 

"I'm sure it's as good a night as you deserve," John Bates said, coming up to help his wife shrug on her coat.  
And Anna grinned up at him from under her lowered lashes, for the woman had a streak of revenge in herself and a distaste for O'Brien that went back a long way.  
"Stick it up her jumper, that one," Anna murmured to him, when they were out in the hallway and well alone.

 

"I'll be going up then, if everything's done?"  
Mrs. Hughes was talking to Mr. Carson, who was next to the stand on which rested the butler's diary. The man was making his last notes of the evening, and she knew it would be acceptable to go.  
They were both suppressing yawns.  
It had been an odd sort of evening, with the staff on tender hooks and taking to telling spook tales, setting Hughes' nerves on edge as well.

An odd, tense sort of expectancy was in the air, and she hoped nothing more  
than that everyone would have a good lie down and wake up better prepared.

 

"Fine for some," Miss O'Brien muttered at the housekeeper, biting off a bit of thread where she sat mending lace on a dress Lady Grantham wished to wear the next day.  
"Don't be nasty, Miss O'Brien," Jimmy said, turning from where he sat at the piano. "You needn't act like your life's suddenly so hard."  
The malevolence in his blue eyes was chilling.

"And how else should I act?" Sarah O'Brien sputtered, rounding on the footman. "When the work around ME never stops. Fine for the love birds going home of a night, or even the rest of you going up, but with Lady Grantham still treating me like some left footed stranger, how am I to feel any sort of Good from any sort of Night we might have?"

 

Behind them, Carson's rumbling voice cut in, "If you're so against the way you've been treated, Miss O'Brien, you can always leave, you know."  
No one, ever, would get away with taking that sort of Tone with Mrs. Hughes, not while Charlie Carson drew a breath. 

"Don't let the door hit you on the way out," Barrow muttered softly from the rocker where he sat, pretending to read, while really listening to Jimmy play the piano.  
"Evil old witch."

And while Carson only very, very rarely had reason to side with Thomas Barrow on anything, on this he nodded agreement.  
"Perhaps, Miss O'Brien, it's best you at least go up, if you can't keep your disagreeable mood confined from the rest of us in any other way."

Nostrils flaring, eyes glaring, Sarah O'Brien got up and with a huffing of breath and a swirl of skirts she departed.  
"Oh, my," Mrs. Hughes murmured softly. "There's trouble brewing there."  
Then, tired and yawning still, she went up.

\---

Sarah entered her melancholy room at the end of a melancholy hallway full of shadows.  
Whoever had decided to paint everything that shade of greyish beige had been thinking more of economy than lightening the moods of servants.  
Indeed, the sense of economy was such that while the hall now had electric lights in the corners, the rooms themselves still had only gas lamps and candles.  
And Sarah strained her eyes over the final bit of sewing, cursing them all, and thinking of how her life was one endless string of traps, entangling her until she was as she remained, a mere serf to the Crawley family and loved by none.

 

"Bah," she said, putting the work aside. "Humbug."  
"Can't see a bit of it this time of night. If she wants it early, she'll just have to whistle for it."  
Tossing the dress in the corner chair, O'Brien started to undress herself, reaching for the corner hook on which her nightgown was hung.  
Drawing back, startled.  
For in a moment, the shadowy corner had appeared to hold the shape of an old man, bent over, wizened.  
Not the shape of a dressing gown, that.

 

Swallowing rapidly, Sarah turned around and picked up the light to shine it further into the corner, pushing the shadows away.  
Nothing. Nothing unexpected at least was there.  
"Bah," she said. "Humbug."  
But she was unnerved enough by the shadow to carry the light fully around the confines of her chamber before placing it on the bed stand again.  
And only with hesitant fingers did she unbutton herself and get ready for bed.

Untwine what had once been a remarkably beautiful chestnut head of hair into a simple twig down her back. Hair now shot with a touch of grey, though she still was vain of it, curling it a bit each night in defiance of the fact that No one any longer looked.

And she laid down in her narrow spinster's cot, sheets cold to almost freezing her, and turned to shut out the last of the light,  
just as the shadows moved again.

 

A little old man, wizened, grimacing slightly, this time not backing away when the light struck his figure, not flittering into the random molecules of oblivion.  
No. Not this time.  
It WAS Mr. Watson. His face whitened, his breath now rising like steam in front of him in the coldness that tonight seemed to overcome the room.  
O'Brien shivered, but refused to be cowed by any Man, living....or dead. 

"And just who do you think you are?" she ground out, irritably. And realizing she suspected the answer to that, followed with "And what do you want with me?"  
"Not much of a greeting, Sarah, after all these years," the man wheezed out, his voice a noxious cloud.  
"I'm to greet a figment of my own imagination," she said, narrowing her eyes in acid amusement. "I'm just come over somehow with a waking sort of dream."

 

"You don't believe I exist then?" Watson said gravely, taking a dragging step toward where she lay.  
"Phht. Not likely. I've just overworked myself a bit. You're just the stress of this place come back to haunt me. Certainly no ghost, you."  
But at that, a gust of strong wind blew through the room, taking her breath with it.  
Next, the light went out, but the figure from the corner still gave a curious sort of glow. 

"Best listen to me for once in your miserable life, Sarah. Best listen to me while you can. I've been in these halls many a day, walking along side you.  
"Yelling at you, cursing you for what you did to me, crying out to you when I realized that I, too, was cursed in a different way."

 

"Cursed? You?" she managed, teeth chattering in spite of the covers she'd now pulled up under her chin.  
"Cursed," he groaned dramatically. " All of us cursed who were part of that petty bickering around this household.  
"Cursed to carry around the world the chains of our disagreeable natures--a purgatory, not just from this household, but wherever our spiteful natures weight us down instead of allowing our better natures room to grow."

The wind blew through arctic cold again.  
"I've come here to warn you, Sarah. And by giving you a message of hope, have that much of my chain severed and dropped."  
"I forgive you, but you must earn your way to sever your own chains if you hope to avoid such a fate as the one I now have."  
And again he gave a dramatic groan to underscore his pain.

 

"Ridiculous," Sarah murmured. And yet the glowing figure frightened her enough to give her pause, superstitious as she was.  
"How is it, then? What is your message of hope, before I'll thank you to be gone?"  
"Haven't you learned the way of it, Sarah O'Brien? Think back to your schooling."

 

"I've no schooling in phantoms and tom foolery," she said, beginning to be irritated, ghost or no.  
And Mr. Watson smiled at her, the same meek smile he'd often had down in the servants hall, but his eyes had a hint of amusement in them tonight.  
Amusement at Her expense. 

"Why, you're to be visited by three ghosts, Sarah. God help you.  
I say I've forgiven you, and I have, but I will admit to some pleasure still in telling you.  
You've visitors coming, Sarah, and you'd best listen to what they say carefully.  
Or you'll be miserable for All Eternity, not just the limited number of days  
you've made yourself miserable already  
There on Earth."


	2. Stave II

\--  
\---  
\--

She'd lost consciousness then, or fallen to sleep before then more likely, Sarah thought as she woke with a start.  
It was pitch black in the room, and she fumbled around for the nightstand.  
Striking a match, she lit the light, warming herself with the faint glow.  
"Foolishness," she mumbled.  
"Utter foolishness. I'm not sure why my nerves took the shape of Mr. Watson. No favorite of mine, him. Silly old man.  
"But three ghosts. Really. What sort of smoke and mirrors are we playing at here? What sort of show from the Gaiety?"

She mumbled and grumbled about, setting her bed clothes right, checking the mirror to see a wan, whey faced countenance glaring back.  
"Humbug," she said, going back to her bed, and tucking herself up in it.  
"And me with so much to do as soon as there's morning light."  
Then the clock struck one, and with a whoosh the breeze blew through again,  
knocking out the light.

 

Sarah O'Brien shuddered slightly as a glow lit the corner of her room, this time in the shape of a child.  
But like some phantasm in a magic lantern show, the child shifted shapes to an old man, then drew back into itself, focusing and unfocusing, and became a child once more.  
A slight of hand trick that left O'Brien--already stunned from fatigue--wondering all the more.

"What?" she said, voice gone thin and weak. "I mean, who? Who are you? Are you one of the three ghosts Mr. Watson mentioned would be my guests?"  
Sarah felt ridiculous saying this, and yet here in front of her own eyes the apparition nodded twice.  
"I am."  
The voice was soft and low, oily and almost tender as it caressed her ear, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.  
"I am the ghost of your past, Sarah. We all have a Past, and now comes the time to examine yours."

 

"Why?" O'Brien said. Her voice stuttered on the syllable.  
"What good is examining something that's long gone?"

"Your welfare," the spirit answered. "In the past lies the seeds of the future, if we don't take heed."  
And the whistle of wind went past her again, making Sarah dizzy. The light went out and the feel of cold fingers against her skin made it crawl, made her cry out.  
"I know you, Sarah. Do you know yourself?"

 

Smells then: of violets & lavender; the wafting scent of tea; sage and hay.  
And before her came the image of a farmyard.  
"Do you recall it?" the cloying voice asked her. 

"Recall it?" she said, swallowing thickly. "It's where I grew up. The farmhouse would be to the left on that path."  
"Strange you so often forget about your family. Never mentioning them until your sister wrote begging you for help."  
"I haven't forgotten. I know who I am," O'Brien protested, starting to rally, until the wind whipped through again and the colors flickered, forcing her to hide, shivering under the counterpane.

 

"You are this girl," the spirit hissed.  
And peeping out, Sarah saw herself as she'd once been, a thin ragged thing, sitting on the steps of a schoolhouse forgotten and forlorn.  
"Oh," was all O'Brien managed, her voice breaking with just the hint of a sob.  
"You are this girl who dreamed of going great places and doing great things. Yet who are you now?"

 

And the lights flickered and dimmed, the wind rushed, and  
Sarah O'Brien ducked under her covers.  
"I'm what I've made of myself, and proud of it, too," she protested.  
"You aren't self made, though, are you?" the voice prodded at her, and the sound of old fashioned music overwhelmed her as it crackled by like a gramophone gone bad.

And as she looked out, she saw the image of them all as they'd been back in the early years in the Downton hall.  
Mr. Jakes, the butler; Carson as first footman; Mr. Watson, his second; Miss O'Brien already a lady's maid for the young Cora Crawley....the gathering of them so numerous, her eyes flitted past, touching on this face and that, trying to remember.  
"They helped you, and yet you never gave anyone thanks."  
(The music wheezed and stuttered and whirled, winding down then speeding up. It made her sick from the sound of it.)

 

"Mr. Jakes was a kind man, far better than Carson ever will be. He knew how to make people enjoy the task at hand, while keeping up the standards that made us proud."  
"Three times the staff," chuckled the ghost's low voice with a hint of irony.  
"Three times the man," O'Brien insisted. And her heart and soul were captivated with the scene, eyes glossing over with tears as she Remembered.  
"So many little kindnesses, things so small...." her voice wandered off. 

"And yet, you remember them as Important even now?"  
"Of course I do," she insisted. "We had good cheer then. Hope. Dreams of what life would be like."  
And as she began to stir and insist angrily that it was not her fault such dreams had died out entirely,  
the light suddenly became piercingly Bright into her eyes; the scene vanished; and a sudden darkness fell, inky black.

And one, two, three, just like that she felt herself alone with only the freezing air around her, and a faint whisper.  
"Where did THAT Sarah O'Brien go?"

\---

She'd tried to relight the light then, of course, but her fingers wouldn't move what with the cold and her shaken nerves.  
"Come, Sarah," she muttered to herself angrily. "This is some sort of silly dream come over you. Wake up, Sarah O'Brien."  
And she tried to take command of her nerves and come back to herself,  
but finally she admitted defeat, and drifted off again into sleep,  
hoping not to dream.


	3. Stave III

\---  
\---  
\---

Waking in the middle of a prodigious snore, O'Brien had no need to be told that another ghost was about to come.   
Rather that another ghost was expected.  
And sitting there, shivering slightly, she felt about for her housecoat, hoping to at least have the shield of an extra layer of flannel between herself and a visitor from the Beyond.

But nothing came.   
Or rather, nothing came but a glowing. A glowing from under the door frame. A glowing from high in the corners of the room.  
And this absence of Spirit frightened her almost as much as the presence of one would have done.   
For Sarah had almost steeled herself to whatever her dreaming mind might show her next.   
What horrible figure would venture toward her?  
Certainly more than a mere Glow. 

 

The sound of a dragging chain went slowly by her door.  
A softly dragging chain, rattling past the doorframe and receding down the hall until the sound became no more.   
Curiosity overcame her.   
Getting up, clutching her housecoat about her, O'Brien opened the door to see what was aglow.   
It was a mist.  
A cold, roiling, cloudy mist as though on a highland moor. Glowing at the edges, from what she couldn't quite see.   
But the glow went down the hall toward the steps, same as the sound had, and squaring her shoulders Sarah followed.

 

"If I can't keep myself awake from this, I might as well hurry the dream along," she muttered.  
Besides, the halls of the big house were second nature to her, bright or dark, she'd trod them so many times.   
A spirit might frighten her, but certainly not a walk down the halls  
even if the cold of the mist licked at her naked ankles as she descended the stairs.

\---

The sound of a dance tune, played fast on the piano greeted her downstairs, as did the lights of the servants hall full ablaze.  
From darkened hall to lit room, her eyes struggled to make the adjustment.   
"Old hag. Wonder why she can't just leave the rest of us alone. Bad enough she's always in a sour mood without sharing it," Jimmy Kent tinkled the ivory keys and nodded toward one of the kitchen maids.   
"Makes our lives miserable, she does," the girl responded to him, loudly enough for Sarah to hear.   
Well, O'Brien would make short work of that.

 

"Why aren't you all in bed at this hour?" O'Brien said loudly, with enough venom to carry even over the talk and piano noise.  
But none of the others reacted. None at all.   
"I think she's just played out her hand and's desperate," Thomas said, face placid as he looked over to where the two stood. "She started all of that mess between you and me, which didn't work."

 

"And now she's stirring around trying to start wars between the maids and hall boys," Ivy added, as two of the young boys came drifting by, nodding and moving about.   
"Not much fun when she yells at you," one said seriously.   
"Come on, let's see if Mrs. Patmore'll give us a bite to eat."  
And out they went. 

Patmore's up, too? O'Brien thought, starting to back out to go to the kitchen. 

 

"You know what we should do to her?" Thomas said suddenly, drawing her back in.   
"You should mind yourself and watch what you're saying," Sarah screeched at him, moving into the servants hall, stopping halfway as she realized she was there so   
scantily dressed. 

No one else reacted, though.   
"We should tell Mr. Carson everything when she does it. Every sin, big and small, drop after drop wearing him down, until by her own fault he finally has to send her packing out the door." Barrow's face was a placid mask as he kept his eyes on Jimmy.   
"Nah," the footman replied. "Why bother? With that one, she'll be dead gone and no one would notice her missing. Why waste your energy getting her to go?"

 

"Her ladyship wouldn't allow me fired. I'm needed here," O'Brien hissed, wanting to take a swing at him, but not quite daring to have done.   
Either he was real, and assault wouldn't help things or he was a ghost and her hand might go right through. (Which after all, would be worse?)  
"Jimmy, play that song I like, will you?" Ivy said, smiling slightly, looking right past where O'Brien stood. "That new one."  
And the cheering tune of dance music filled the servants hall, as the boys came back in with biscuits and settled in to play at cards, not sparing her a glance.

Until the sound of a chain dragging heavily by in the hall distracted her, forcing her to duck outward.  
And the lights, which had been so bright suddenly went black.

 

Feeling around, Sarah only encountered a great deal of space and cold air.   
Far away, at the head of the staircase, there was still the glow.  
And racing, as though to safety, Miss O'Brien mounted the staircase, whipping past the foggy glow of the hallway into her room, where now the warmth of a candle on her nightstand gave her some confidence.   
That and the chair she dragged in front of her doorframe, hoping to keep out the third and final bit of the Show.


	4. Stave IV

\--  
\--  
\--

Breathing slowly in the fresh air from the slight gap at the bottom of her window, Sarah tried to calm the beating of her heart.  
The room was cold, but then of course it would be; it was winter after all wasn't it?  
Why had she left the window open, even a bit like that?  
The lady's maid shivered.

She was just dreaming what she knew they said about her behind her back, after all.  
She'd miscalculated some when she'd tried to take Thomas down a peg or two, after his Disloyalty.  
However, for a time it had been him or her, and of course she had to fight tooth and nail to ensure Her place was safe. 

But how safe was it now in a place where no one even spoke to her without a measured bit of distain?

 

Yes, dream...or ghosts...whatever these visions were, O'Brien realized that  
some things needed to be answered.  
Where HAD that girl gone who earlier had wanted adventure?  
Where had that young maid disappeared who thought serving a grand house would get her respect?  
Watson had walked these same halls, and now what was he but a ghost carrying around the chains of service and grievances, clear into the afterlife.  
Was she to be no more than that?

 

From outside came the sound of soft laughter and the sight of a whizzing flash.

The third one, then.  
She couldn't escape seeing it, this Final Act from the world beyond.  
And Sarah slowly, gravely, silently approached the window to look out on what came.

 

Another whizz, and flash, but across it moved a dark figure, as though in a gallows robe.  
Behind him, a line of mourners, carrying a long box, the shape of a casket,  
though the pervasive darkness outside made things hard to see.  
Still,  
Light laughter drifted up, appalling her.  
"There goes Miss. O'Brien," a girl's voice caroled out.  
"She would have seen me leaving to the prison workhouse without much of a care now wouldn't she," a man's voice added with dry humor.  
A third said chuckling, "Guess the only way She'll leave is in a box."

  


And Sarah O'Brien gave a bit of a choking cry then,  
gathering herself together in alarm.  
"Well we'll just see about that. This dark vision doesn't have to happen. Watson said from the First of it I can change."

She paused. "There's still Hope."

\---

Her clothes? Shoved into a case easily.  
Two notes written to leave on the mantle.  
Lady Flintshire had wanted her services, and besides if that didn't suit at least she would be gone from here.  
Mr. Watson was right.  
Enough of the pettiness of Downton. Enough of forging the chains of her own despair and sadness.  
And by the time the dawn began to creep across the morning landscape,  
O'Brien was ready to go with it. 

 

One last look around.  
Her bed, neatly made as it had been all these years.  
Her bureau, missing now the brushes and combs she'd tucked onto the top of her case.  
To any casual eye,  
all was normal as the day crept into being, but last night's  
ghosts or dreams or spells of self recognition lingered on the edges of Sarah O'Brien's memory.  
Still feeling quite real.

The women went quietly out the door and down the drive of Downton Abbey.  
Thankful that she could be free of the place, hopefully finding a new one where her passing would not go unmourned.  
Her efforts would not go without respect.  
She could become as good of a woman, as good of a servant, as good and successful as ever she'd hoped back in the days when she'd first started it all.  
The spirits had shown her what was needed, and Sarah made it her Vow.

\---

Behind her, meanwhile, news was spreading as the household woke.  
"Miss O'Brien's left?"

"Oh, bless us, she's actually gone?"

"Jimmy! O'Brien's left." Joy and amusement in his tone.

And downstairs at least, the household brightened appreciably.

As from far above in an attic window, a wizened old man's face looked down and smiled.  
Indeed, the old valet thought, watching O'Brien's departure  
God bless them, every one.


End file.
